Sarah Ashkin

No Grounds

This piece is part of We Are All Space in Time, a collection of four site-responsive interactions, installations, and experiments that acknowledge the complexities of coexistence, curated by Erin Elder.

The artist: Sarah is a choreographer, educator, and curator using dance as a tool for embodied political intervention. She understands the performance-making process as a feminist, anti-capitalist, anti-racist practice that emerges from collaborative content creation and community engagement. As a body-based artist, Ashkin uses weight, task, gesture, humor, intimacy, and musicality, to poetically illuminate socio-political stories of people place. Her work is made in response to specific sites of inquiry and situates itself between postmodern dance, performance art, and ritual. At New Mexico School for the Arts (2012-2015), Ashkin developed site-specific curriculum and led students in creating works at museums, in parking garages, and in response to a variety of historic and contemporary issues. Ashkin earned an MA in Dance from Roehampton University.

About the art: How has white supremacy served as a method and a motivation for land appropriation in the United States? Through this evening-length series of choreographed movements, Sarah Ashkin explores the marking of territory, the negotiation of land rights, and the complexities of safety, security, and ownership. Aided by the participation of audience members, No Grounds is a lightly scripted performance that holds space for productive tension in its vulnerable, courageous and beautiful address of people’s relationship to property.